“The festival gives expression to our demand for a peaceful coexistence of all humans with their different cultures, languages and traditions.”

– Proclamation of the festival’s organizers.

The beautiful, rosy multicultural paradise Europe’s leftists promised in the 1960s and ’70s manifested itself brilliantly again recently at a Kurdish festival in Mannheim, a German city in the south-western state of Baden-Wurttemberg. Almost as soon as the festival began, German police were set upon by hundreds of young Kurds who were encouraged “with words and applause” by thousands of others. When the shocking, hours-long savagery ended, eighty policemen were injured, one seriously, while “more than a dozen vehicles were destroyed” before order could be restored.

Martin Boll, a spokesman for Mannheim’s police, said he had never seen such violence in his 30 years of police service.

“The outbreak of violence by the attackers was enormous,” said Boll, who was described by German newspapers as “visibly shaken” by the events. “Hundreds, if not more than a thousand Kurdish assailants stormed towards the police and threw stones at officials.”

One German newspaper said policemen had to “throw themselves down behind vehicles” in order to avoid the pavement stones, glass bottles, bricks, barricades and even firecrackers that were being thrown at them.

It was estimated 40,000 people, of whom 2,500 were regarded as “violent or violence-prepared,” attended the twentieth holding of this annual “multicultural” event. Most of the previous 19 Kurdish festivals had been held in the German state of Rhineland-Westphalia. An estimated 600,000 to 800,000 Kurds live in Germany, but Kurds had travelled from all over Europe for this year’s festival in Mannheim.

The riot began when officials of a security firm contracted by the festival’s organizers asked two policemen for assistance with a 14-year-old Kurdish youth who was refusing to give up a flag he was carrying of the banned Kurdish terrorist group, the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK). Apparently angry at the police intervention, about 100 young Kurds “suddenly attacked the two policemen from behind and kicked them in the back.” The violence escalated from there as more police and thugs were drawn in.

Unfortunately, the Mannheim riot is not an isolated incident. Germans and other Europeans are becoming more accustomed to seeing their municipal police forces attacked by people who, for the most part, had been allowed into Europe under the multicultural banner or asylum laws.

Last May, for example, three German policemen were injured when Salafists, adherents of a violent, ultra-conservative strain of Islam, attacked police in Solingen with stones. The Salafists were staging a counter-demonstration against a rally by members of the Pro Rhineland-Westphalia Party (PRO NRW), a group that is protesting the Islamization of Germany. The Salafists, some of whom were German converts, said they were provoked by caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad the PRO NRW demonstrators were carrying. But since there were no stones in the demonstration area, police believe the Salafists had brought them, indicating their violent intentions. There were 40 arrests.

Also in May, hundreds of Salafists fought “a brutal street battle” with police in Bonn after PRO NRW demonstrators again held up caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad outside the King Fahd Academy. During the riot, a policewoman and a policeman were seriously injured by a Salafist in a knife attack, suffering “severe cut and stab wounds.”

A further outbreak of rioting and possible police injuries was prevented later in May in Cologne when the city’s authorities, not wanting a repeat of the Bonn violence, called up a large force of 1,000 police officers, equipped with water cannon and riot gear, to protect 25 PRO NRW members demonstrating before a local Salafist mosque. Police blocked off the streets and prevented the two sides from coming into contact but arrested several Salafists found with knives, stones and other projectiles.

The rioting in Mannheim was preceded by an invasion of a hospital in Denmark in August by 70 members of a Muslim gang. They had earlier shot and stabbed two rival gang members and arrived at the hospital’s emergency area to “finish off” the two injured victims. Fortunately, police officers present turned the mob back after firing their guns but not before the thugs had vandalized the emergency area and destroyed an ambulance and police car. Fortunately, no police or hospital workers were hurt. But some Danes are upset at the fact that, as of the last report, only three arrests have been made despite the large number involved.

There have also been only 31 arrests made in the Mannheim riot. Since visitors to the festival came from all over Europe, police say it will be difficult to identify many of those involved.

It is not surprising that Germans are wondering what is going on in their country today. Many realize that multiculturalism is a destructive, failed policy and that they are destined to experience many more such violent, “culturally enriching” moments in the future. They question why people are being let into Germany who actually belong in jail rather than on their streets. But what appears to upset Germans most about the Mannheim riot, even more than the lack of arrests, is that the police lost control of the situation and actually had to retreat to safety, leaving the rioters in control of the area for hours until police reinforcements arrived.

“We were momentarily rather at a loss and didn’t know how to master the situation,” said Boll. “We had to vacate the field without a fight.”

Finally, when a force of 600 had been assembled, the police were able to restore order that evening. The number of festival-goers injured remained unknown, because police and emergency vehicles did not enter the event area for obvious safety reasons.

Due to this loss of control on the part of the Mannheim police, some Germans are now worried whether security authorities will be able protect them when such inevitable rioting occurs again in future. Besides the complete lack of respect shown towards the forces of law and order, the weakness of the Mannheim police was highly disturbing to them, since a strong police force is instrumental for citizens’ protection in a state based on the rule of law. One reader stated in Die Welt he would never have thought one must have more fear nowadays about the future peace of Europe than during the Cold War. And if the police cannot enforce law and order, another reader asked, what could prevent such a “violence-prepared” mob from “breaking into houses, plundering and pillaging?”

The answer is nothing. The politicians are also not going to help correct the situation by sending large numbers of these miscreants back to their country of origin. So the only option left is, like in America, for the ordinary citizen to arm him- or herself, if one wants to survive in the “beautiful, new multicultural world” Europe has become.